It was a slow start to the game for the North Carolina Tar Heels, falling behind 7-0 to NC Central in that first quarter. As that continued in the first half, the worries mounted for the Tar Heels as they looked for a spark on offense.

That spark came in the form of Jacolby Criswell who entered at quarterback and the running of Omarion Hampton.

The two helped lead a big second half for the Tar Heels as they eventually pulled away and beat NC Central 45-10. Hampton rushed for over 200 yards and had three touchdowns while the offense looked better under Criswell.

While it was a win, it was closer than it should have been at numerous points in this game. Before UNC looks to James Madison, let's read what Mack Brown had to say after his team's win.

Opening statement

"Happy to be 3-0, and that's really, really important. You start looking at the game, and the first half, first drive, they had 75 yards and there were seven minutes left to go in the quarter. So obviously they came in thinking they couldn't block us and then wanted to keep the ball. And it worked, and it worked partially because of the inflicted wounds that we had through penalties. You can't have 10 penalties. We've been so good in the first two weeks not to have penalties. And here we are. We look up and we got 10 at halftime, 16 for the game. So it's probably good in a game that you dominate and didn't play as well as you could have because of those penalties.

"Really proud of the goal line stand, and then after forcing the field goal, they came back out, and the defense just totally dominated the game in the second half. Offensively, we made some plays. We did some good things, Jacolby hit some passes, Conner struggled a little bit early. I was glad that he came back in and hit a couple of passes at the end of the game, we'll be playing both of them. We're just going to look at it and see what we can do to find the hot hand and keep them out there. Omarion is great. We dropped a couple of passes with tight ends in the first half and then caught all of them in the second half. So proud of the guys, proud of the way they fought, and happy to be 3-0, and we only had the ball for 26 minutes and 19 seconds. They had it for 33 minutes and 41 seconds.

"So it's what college football's got, and when they shorten the game, you can't let them keep the ball. And I thought the kicking game got a turnover, we had the great kickoff return. We had a penalty there, we had a holding penalty. So we'll go back and look at all those tonight and see which ones we felt like are penalties because you can't punish the kids if it's not a penalty, even though it's called, because we got human beings making calls out there. And a couple of times I thought we lost our composure, and you got to compete, but you got to compete with your composure. You can't lose composure. And they probably know all the NC Central guys that there's a lot of mouthing back and forth, a lot more than I thought there'd be, and we can't have that, period."

Via Inside Carolina

On plan for both QBs to play tonight?

"We decided during the week that we were going to put him (Criswell) in in the third series regardless. And then he threw the ball, because we wanted to play both of them. And if you just put him in, and you don't tell Conner you're going to put him in, then Conner thinks you're taking him out. So we've learned enough. We didn't want to do that. And then when he (Criswell) took it right down and scored, we wanted him to go back in. And then he played well. Conner, I was hoping we'd have a little more time at the end of the game. And when you put your second and third team in on defense, usually you don't get them out like other defensive guys did. But I was glad Conner hit a couple of passes there at the end of the game."

via Inside Carolina

On Who starts next week?

"We'll look at every play tonight. And it's funny when I hear everything on the headsets, and when Chip (Lindsey) says, 'hand the ball off.' He should have and he messed up. So Chip will grade it tonight, Clyde, we got Clyde Christensen, who's the best out there. He will grade it tonight. And then all the coaches will grade it tonight. I'll grade it separately. And then we all get together in the morning. They'll get together first as a staff, and they'll go over everything that they think. I will write up my thoughts, and then we'll get together tomorrow and look at. Not sure what we'll do for practice tomorrow afternoon, but we'll look at what we think we're going to do at Tuesday's practice."

via Inside Carolina

On has Max Johnson talked to the team?

No, he sat on the fifth floor tonight. So he did see the game. He got back maybe Thursday, about six o'clock at night. I saw him the next morning. I think I saw him Friday morning in the training room, and he looks good. He's at a good spot, and he's doing well. He's still having some trouble getting around. So when we get him so we can figure out, is it a golf cart? Is it a scooter? Because with his problems here, it's hard to sit. We've got him back safe, and he's excited about starting to come to meetings and be on the sidelines."

via Inside Carolina

On penalties tonight

"I don't have any earthly idea, probably not being as focused as we have. It was unbelievable. I mean, it made me so mad. I mean, I was sitting there, and we've talked about pre snap penalties, and the first play, I think we're offsides. I mean, it's unbelievable, and they did a good job pulling us off. I think everybody on defense got offsides at some point or another tonight. And then we have, I thought one late hit on the quarterback was probably fair or a push on the quarterback, the other one I thought Des (Evans) did a good job. They called Marcus Allen for taunting on the sideline. If he did, he needs to shut up. I mean, come on, man, play ball. Just keep your mouth shut. There's no place for that in football. I was really, really disappointed in our defensive penalties. They absolutely disrupted the first half, and we would have taken care of the game in the first half if it hadn't been for the penalties."

via Inside Carolina

On UNC's run game

"We're a team that runs the ball. We were averaging 243 yards or something, maybe coming into the game, and had 330 tonight, I think. So we're gonna run the ball. That's who we are and we had to be who we are without those offensive linemen, because you never know who's gonna sprain an ankle again, and you don't know when those two will be back. And we watched Aiden (Banfield) before the game. We were expecting him to play, and he's such a nice young man, he's so tough. He told us he can play, and then we watched him come off in pregame, and he couldn't, he couldn't have done a good job tonight. But we're going to run the ball, and we're going to run the ball every week, and that's who we are. And we've got to continue to grow in our passing game. We've been a team that could throw it and run some. Now we're a team that can run it, and we need to be able to balance it with the throwing game."

via Inside Carolina

On having a player like Omarion Hampton

"Omarion is such a great player. I look up and I think, 'eh,' and then it's second and two. Or he scores, and he's got eight of them on him. And he takes care of the ball, he pass protects, he catches the ball. He did drop one tonight, which I was surprised, because it was a little bit behind him. Omarion is just a great player, and that's why we took him out in the fourth quarter and just said, 'go sit down.' But he had the bruise last week, and I didn't think he's showed any effects of it this week."

via Inside Carolina

This article originally appeared on Tar Heels Wire : What Mack Brown said after North Carolina's win over NC Central